»> > > • 



33j>>> i 






m} 









at' » » > • 
> > > 3 



> ~? 



> >-» - > 

> •> > 



», > 3 3 > >> 

Si < '* J ' > }) 3 






>» > > 



> >■> ■ > 

1 > >•» i ;> 



X3 :>>v> 

>3 )»»,) 



1 X3 ) j> ^>j r" 



' > > • > » > 

J -> • *> » • >> 



> 3 > >> j> 
1 > > > •» • 
.> 3> »> 



c; * 



JBRARY OF CONGRESS, 



FORCE COLLECTION] 



V/. 



^4 



DLLECTIOI 



1K3 



UNITED STATES OF iMERICA. 



>3 O o 

» BO 5 

?} I * 
W } * > 

"3 

3 



* ■* * * ^*- ■* •*• V v % %, O 



■ > 









a. , . >, 



1 -» 



» » 
>> > 

>» >: 



> 



.-• >J ,. 






»s> > > > 



>' far 
-> > > 

> 3) 



^ \ ^ «*> > 05 






■oV, - 

ft >51 

;»» >■ » ■ m.'J?- 

m » >j> > » f 

,. v> y 

\-> > > i 



>» 3X> 

>a> Ira 



» 3 n>^ 



> '■ »» > >. .» 

^ » » 



y 
<* 






> / ? » *C> 

1 ? ;. ; ': 

^ > » j ■> 






























' > !> > > > J > 

' • >> i> > > ) > > . > 



^ ) y i 



^> > >> > 






M 

MR. CLAY'S DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES AND MEASURES FOR GENERAL 
HARRISON'S ADMINISTRATION, REVIEWED IN A LETTER FROM MR. SEN- 
ATOR ALLEN OF OHIO, TO T. J. MORGAN, CHAIRMAN OF THE YOUNG 
MEN'S V STATE CENTRA/i COMMITTEE OF OHIO. 

^ 



-. 






' 



Washington City, July 23, 1842. 
My dear sir: Your obliging letter of the 8th instant came to me several days 
since; and would have been immediately answered, but for the pressure of 
business with which I could not dispense. 

I should be gratified,^ assure you, were it in my power to attend, as you in- 
vite me, the Young Men's State convention, of the 28th instant. I should be 
gratified for other reasons; but especially so that I might there be able to take 
once more by the hand hundreds of the noble spirits whom it is my pride to 
call personal as well as political friends, and with many of whom I became first 
acquainted when traversing the State, to offer my little aid in the contest of 
1838, and in the more terrible struggle of 1840. But the madness of the dom- 
inant majority seems likely to make this session of Congress as long as it has 
already made it odious; and I have, therefore, no prospect of being present in 
person. Id soul and in sentiment, however, I shall be with the democracy 
then, and always, whilst I have reason enough left to appreciate the value of 
freedom. 

When the convention meets, it will find the federal government, for the first 
time, brought down, by its own acts, in sixteen months of the profoundest 
peace, to a point of distress as low and humiliating as could well have resulted 
from the most protracted and disastrous war. This great calamity is the first- 
born offspring of federalism, since it assumed the name of whigery, and em- 
bodied its principles and its passions in the form of a national administration. 

For many years prior to 1840, the leaders of that party had been busily col- 
lecting into a common focus all the diseased elements of society. In that year 
they found the public mind fretful and restless. They found thousands discon- 
tented, whom the reaction of their own system of currency and credit had ru- 
ined. They found banks, bankruptcy, indolence, avarice, rapacity, impudence, 
venality, profligacy, cupidity, and fraud, all standing ready to league with ambi- 
tion for the powei and plunder of the country. The league was formed, and 
every feeling of the human heart that lay within the reach of terror or corrup- 
tion, was then stimulated into revolt against the democratic party. The prices 
of all things were suddenly reduced, because the politicians had prompted the 
banks thus to aggravate the public distresses, by the reduction of their dis- 
counts and circulation. The people were openly treated with contempt by the 
brutality of the appeals made to their senses. Fraud and folly, the most crim- 
inal and ridiculous, were employed to distract their attention, bewilder their 
minds, and mislead their action. To affect their imagination?, everything, from 
the gorgeous ensign of the republic, with its stars and stripes streaming from 
its halyards, down to the skin of the most loathsome skunk, was displayed ta 
the popular eye. Globes and cabins, banners and bushes, barrels and brutes, 
harangue and music, revelry and feasting, the song and the bottle, imprecations, 
blasphemy, badges, and buffoonery— all things that could minister to confusion, 
were made to chime in the general din. Reason was silenced in the turmoil; 
aud truth, for once, in our country yielded its empire to falsehood, fraud, and 









fri\olity. [f these leaden condescended, for a moment, to speak seriously to 
the people, il was but i<> denounce things ae abuses which did not exist, and to 
make pledges of reform they never intended i<> fulfil. They deplored the scar- 
city of monej they had themselves occasioned, and promised abundance on 
their accession ti> power. They condemned removal from office tor the sake of 
opinion, and invoked Heaven to witness that this practice should cease. They 
promised the unfortunate a reparation of his fortunes — the laborer an increase 
of hi- waget — the tanner an addition to his prices — the hopeless of every de- 
Bcription the gratification of being soon surprised in their despondency by the 
timely bounty of government, to be distributed among them. To the nation at 
lan;e, they promised Opulence and contentment, the restoration of law and 
order, the healing of all wounds, the restitution of all rights, the reparation of 
all wrongs, the cure of all ills, the remedy of all disorders, the observance of 
all obligations, the reduction of all burdens, economy in all things, security, 
plenty, and happiness to all men. Thus was excited every passion of our na- 
ture, to its eztremest limit, by all the means which the joint energies of ambi- 
tion and rapacity could employ. Thus was the public heart torn and lacerated 
— the public mind stung and goaded; and thus was an administration, conduct- 
ed by men of honor, ability, and patriotism, undermined and Overthrown by the 
most stupendous conspiracy that ever yet was levelled against the liberties of a 
(p.- people. 

What has been the result? 

On the 4th of March, 1841, the whole power of the country changed hands: 
Mr. Van Buren and his friends retired without a murmur, and gave place to 
Gem ral Harrison and his. The event of the contest had for months been 
known; and, from that moment, proscription for opinion ceased to be a crime. 
Throughout the land, one wild and universal cry was heard for the blood and 
bread of the democrats in ollice. Before he had left the banks of the Ohio, the 
President-elect was beset by intruders without number, and importunities be- 
voml the power of gratification. On his arrival in the capital, he found it already 
besieged by thousands, who had trooped together from all parts of the Union, 
to demand of him the spoils of a conquered country. There was an impatient 
ferocity in their looks, like that of a rapacious soldiery when restrained for a 
moment from the sack and plunder of a subjugated city. Me was a man scar- 
red with the infirmities of aye — of a heart, I believe, that found no pleasure in 
the passion of revenge; and therefore, when left to himself was disinclined to in- 
flict, without cause, upon so many men, the miseries of a general removal. But 
neither his infirmities nor his feelings were respected by his victorious partisans; 
and on the very first day of his power — within ten minutes after the official 
oath was administered, and whilst he was yet descending the eastern portico of 
the Capitol — his friends in the Senate admonished him of the haste he was ex- 
pected to make in the execution of vengeance, and the distribution of spoil, by 
Submitting in that body the following resolution: 

i a Hi-., be dismissed as printers to the Senate for the twenty-seventh Con- 

On the seventh da) after, this resolution was passed; and thus were, 
these defenceless citizens — without a crime, or even a charge against them 

Inn that of then opinioni deprived of their contract solemn!) made with 

the Senate, their bond annulled, ami all the expenses thej had inclined to ex* 

eCUte the work, thrown as a dead loss upon them. Mere was an example the 

was expected to follow and from that day, to )the day of his final 

affliction, whether in bis man- ion or in his walks, in public or in private! under 

all circumstances, and at all time, the offici -seekers still clustered around him. 

It was iM. i ih.- plea of ins infirmities, or that of bis arduous duties; nor was it 

inn of hit time-withered hand with a gesture to nine that could remove 



the dense mass who pursued and importuned him. In spite of all these, they 
followed him up, swarming upon him still thicker every hour, until, at last, like 
hornets, they stung him to death. Nor were the terrors of a death-bed, or the 
solemn condition of an expiring man, sufficient to silence their clamors, or stay, 
for an instant, the removals his subordinates were making in his name. For, 
upon the authority of that name, though insensible himself, and sinking to the 
grave, the more cruel of his counsellors continued to swing the axe of execu- 
tion, as if determined that the last mortal sound which broke upon the ear of 
the dying President should be — not the sound of prayeT, or the filial sob, but 
the distressful scream of a victim, struck down in his presence. And even 
after his death, and the translation of his remains from the capital to the West, 
democrats were spurned from office, upon the sole allegation that he, in his 
life, had intended their removal. 

Such was the first result; and what was the next? 

They had declared the country ruined by democratic councils. They had 
declared the single object of their own advent to be its immediate redemption. 
Yet, notwithstanding this, no sooner did they find themselves all-powerful, and 
the people all-powerless, than they began to disclose other objects, far different 
from that — objects, in their tendency, ruinous to every interest they had prom- 
ised to foster, save the interests of the few against the rights of the many; and 
blasting to all the hopes they had labored to excite, save the hopes of the rapa- 
cious, for the plunder of the government. But to disclose such objects was 
dangerous, if their execution was delayed. It was important, therefore, (and 
well they knew it,) to forge and rivet their system of measure upon the country,^ 
whilst the public mind was yet feverish and flighty, from the inflammation of 
the recent struggle. Strike whilst the iron is hot, was the signal passed to his 
followers, by him who spoke for the whole, and whom all obeyed. Let not the 
people cool down; but now, while the glow and giddiness of triumph are upon 
them, let us rush to the capital, and there, in the midst of the general glee, bind 
and clinch our system on the nation. 

This, it seems, was the policy which prompted the convention of Congress, 
in extraordinary session, on the 31st of May, 1841. 

On that day the extra session commenced; and then it was that those 
measures were proposed, which express the real motives of the leaders, and 
which have brought the government and the country to their present condition. 
They were then victors over the whole field of power. With the executive— with 
a majority overwhelming in both branches of Congress — there was nothing to 
restrain the full sway of their pleasure or their principles. This they knew, and 
this they felt; and therefore it was, that their chief in the Senate, with all the 
swaggering indelicacy of one unaccustomed to success, openly proclaimed to 
the democracy of the body that we had been condemned by the judgment of 
the people — had been brought together only for execution; and that all we 
uttered was to be heard as nothing but the complaints of malefactors on their 
way to the scaffold. Such was the delirium of meritless triumph and vulgar 
revenge with which the federalists began their work; who, without preparing 
anything in its stead, laid hold upon the sub-treasury, and tore it to the ground. 
Thus did these infatuated men — they who had most falsely charged the demo- 
cratic party with having committed the public treasure to the sole custody of 
the executive — with having united in his person both the sword and the purse, — 
thus did they, among the very first acts of their power, do, themselves, the very 
same thing so unjustly ascribed to others, by the repeal of the only law which 
placed the money of the nation out of the reach of the President. No bank, no 
law, no resolution, had they passed, to take the place of the act repealed. No 
is there, to this day, any such provision, or any such likely to be, while the 
present Congress remains. 

And why is this? If the majority cannot get the fiscality they desire, can 



they not pass an act to secure the revenue? or do they intend to leave it, as it 
i- exposed to the hazard of official pillage, in order to try, once more, the 
coercion of the people into a national bank? 

These men came into power, as we arc told, upon the holy mission of guard- 
ing the sanctity of the constitution, the law, and all human obligations. So 
pious was their reverence f<>r the observance of contracts, that s_>me of their 
number were willing that this government, though penniless itself, and plunging 
in debt, should assume the debts of the States, rather than witness their repu- 
diation. Nevertheless, these rerj Bans men, the chosen and the anointed 
guardians of all things sacred, by one general act, with the name of bank- 
ruptcy for it> caption, repudiated the dehts of the larger dehtors throughout 
the entire nation. By hie single oath, they allowed the interested party, if 
Ins debts were largo and his means considerable, to cancel his bond; and thus 
to ruin the friend or the neighbor who, as creditor or security, had con- 
tided in his honor. I say, if the debts were large: because, if small, and the 
debtor poor, the expense of the process makes the law unavailable, and, 
therefore, a nullity to him. To execute the act, the federal judiciary 
passes over the constitution, usurps the rightful jurisdiction of the local 
courts, and defies and spurns the sovereignty of the States. But no matter for 
that — the greater bankrupts, the magnificent millionaires of the paper system, 
were brought to bankruptcy — not by misfortune in legitimate trade — not by ac- 
cident beyond the power of discretion, but by the eagerness of an avarice seek- 
ing to gratify itself in the gamblings of speculation, and then wasting, in splen- 
did profusion, all that the fortune of the hazard placed within its reach. As 
men already ruined and desperate, they had entered the contest of 1840, with 
the pledge of the federalists that their debts should be treated as gambling obli- 
gations, and sponged by the law and an oath. And this pledge alone, of the 
many made, bias federalism faithfully fulfilled. 

Economy, let it be remembered, had been promised as a policy proper in it- 
self, and especially so in the then necessitous state of the treasury; and yet, by 
this wry convention of Congress, at a time not appointed by the law, three hun- 
dred and ninety-one thousand dollars were wasted in the payment of its mem- 
bers, and other expenses of the session. 

Twenty-live thousand dollars were next bestowed, as a gratuity, upon the 
widow of the late President; and this without any request from her, or necessity 
found in her pecuniary circumstances. So far from any such necessity then ex- 
1-tinir, or likely to exist, it was a fact well known and declared at the time, that 
the private fortune of that respectable lady placed her above the humility of ask- 
ing >uch favors from any quarter whatever. Still, the money was voted from the 
treasury, as if taxes were nothing to the people, and waste the duty of the gov- 
ernment. 

.\i it last session, which closed on the 4th of March, 1841, the preceding 
Congress bad made all the usual and needful appropriations, and provided the 
means for the public service, of the ensuing year. But, regardless of this — re- 
gardless alike of the condition of the countrv and of their own promises, so sol- 
emnly given, the ruling majority in the present Congress proceeded but three 
months after, and before one-third of those appropriations were expended, to 
appropriate, for the service of the rery same year, an addition of Jive million and 
forty-three thousand dollars. The name of economy was po longer heard, but 

when pronounced by the democrats, to remind the federalists of what they had 
pledged, and to rebuke them for what thej Were about. Heedless of this, the 

b-ader.-, who projected these measures, seemed but the more diligent to discover 
every excuse for extravagance, thai could find impunity in the general pretext 
ef the public good. 

Hut those who expend, must also accumulate: and, in the case of govern- 
ment, taxes and loans are the chief sources of supply. Hence it was that after, 



by this additional expenditure, they had effectually picked the very bones of the 
treasury, they next turned their attention t<> the increase of the taxes. Here 
was a nerve to be touched, that ran through the body of the people; and there- 
fore it was important to prepare them for the shock, by the soothing process of 
distribution. They had left in the coffers of the government not an unappropri- 
ated dollar. The ordinary income was short of the extraordinary outlay. Taxes, 
had they been sufficient in amount, came in too tardily to meet the rapidity of 
expenditure; and to borrow, became, consequently, the only immediate re- 
source. This state of things was known and acknowledged, because brought 
about by the ruling majority. What then did they do? In aggravation of these 
evils, and as if fatally bent upon the utter bankruptcy and ruin of the govern- 
ment confided to their care, they proceeded to snatch every dollar accruing to 
the treasury from the public domain, and to cast it away in pittances to the 
States. No consciousness of its folly, no barrier in the constitution, no "beg- 
garly account of empty boxes" from the Treasury department, no terrors of a 
national debt, could possibly arrest them in this. Nor was the injustice of aug- 
menting taxes, when the means of the people to pay were diminishing, suffi- 
cient to retard, much less to prevent, this profligate waste of the nation's re- 
sources. Distribute they would; and that, too, at the hazard of the 
public execration. They confided in the craft of the scheme, and were 
willing to risk its exposure. One dollar was to be given by the govern- 
ment, through the States, to the people; and for that, three paid back, 
by the people, through the custom-house, to the government. The peo- 
ple would see, and might be tempted, by the amount they received; that 
which they paid was to be taken from them, in the dark and at a distance. The 
first process was to be direct and visible — the second, circuitous and obscure; 
and it was upon this obscurity that the federalists relied for impunity against 
detection in the impostnre. The act of distribution was therefore passed; and 
then, in an instant after, the same men who passed it urged that very act, by 
which the land revenue was thus excluded from the treasury, as an additional 
reason why the taxes upon the people should be immediately increased. A tax 
of six millions of dollars was accordingly added, in the form of tariff duties, to 
the burdens before imposed upon the nation. 

But, in view of the lost revenue distributed, the vast appropriations already 
made, and those intended for the future, even this increase of taxes would 
prove inadequate. A loan of twelve millions of dollars was, therefore, author- 
ized upon the credit of the people, and the pledge of their farms and workshops 
for its payment, principal and interest. This, it was supposed, would, together 
with the taxes and treasury notes already afloat, afford a fund sufficient to feed, 
for the present, even the extravagance of the ruling power. A national debt 
would, it was true, with all its evils, be the inevitable consequence. So much 
the better; for such a debt, instead of being a reason with federalists why they 
should economize the public income, has ever been, and yet is, with them, of 
all reasons, the very strongest for the most boundless prodigality of expendi- 
ture. And therefore, with this infatuated affection for a public debt, they weie 
not to be satisfied with the twelve million loan as a beginning; but on the con- 
trary, they proceeded immediately to add sixteen millions to that — the last being 
intended as the basement stock of the fiscalitv — a national bank more hideous, 
infinitely, in all its features, than was the former institution, whose conduct, 
decay, and dissolution, have appalled the world, have doomed to penury so 
many families, and imparted so much impurity to the social and political morals 
of the country. 

Nature never abandoned men absolutely to their own indiscretion; for, even 
in the gross confusion of public affairs, she often interposes her silent author- 
ity to check the dominant power in a state, whenever it threatens to inflict a 
degree of misery she never intended mankind should endure. Out of the bosom 



of the whig party, therefore, the veto sprung, to 6trike down the forthcoming 
monster, whilst yet in its fu'tus condition. The presiding magistrate had re- 
ceived the Bceptre from the hands of that party, but not upon the condition of 
perjury and dishonor. He felt that he owed some allegiance to the constitu- 
tion of his country: and, as it was the constitutional veto which alone inter- 
. epted the bank and the debt tin- majority desired, they resolved to attack the 
constitution itself, and the President who had dared to support it. Thus far, 
upon thai point, he still stands firm. How long the constitution shall stand, 
remains for the people and the States to determine. It is enough that the na- 
tion now knows full well the designs of the federal leaders, their principles, 
their measures — the measures of their ambition and profligacy, as thus display- 
ed, in an extra session of three months and fourteen days' duration, and which 
closed its memorable labors on the 13th of September, 1841. 

Congress commenced its present session on the 6th of December, 1841, and, 
up to the date of this letter, has continued, without intermission, for seven months 
and seven days. It will adjourn some time or other — but not, I presume, until 
the master majority shall have more effectually (if that be possible) exhausted 
their own passions and the patience of the people, as well as the resources and 
<re<l it of the government. When they assembled, that silent but thorough revo- 
lution, which is now perfected in the public mind, had then greatly advanced, as 
was risible in the popular elections. Upon almost every battle-field where, in 
1840, they triumphed, they have'sincebeen routed by a people indignant at having 
been so shamefully betrayed. Full one half of their numbers, both in the Sen- 
nd in the House, now find themselves unsupported — their principles and 
their measures sternly condemned by the States and districts that sent them 
here. In federalism, however, this has produced no change. From the begin- 
ning of the present, it has continued the policy of the extra session, and yet 
continues to pursue that policy, with all the preternatural energy of despair — 
as though resolved, during the brief futurity of its power, to stamp upon the 
country, as deeply as possible, the dark impress of its baleful genius. With 
these views, the party have proceeded. They have authorized an additional 
loan of five millions of dollars. They have added five millions more to the 
treasury notes previously issued. But these, with those of the extra session, are 
still not enough: and, therefore, another tariff has passed the House, and will 
as certainly pass the Senate, imposing thirteen millions more of taxes upon the 
country. Thus, every article from abroad — all things that minister to the wants 
of men — tea, coffee, whatever is most needful to the poorest citizen, — each one 
and all now yields its tribute to fill yet fuller the already distended maw of in- 
satiate power. 

And vet. after all this — loan-, laves, and treasury notes — how stands the 
treasury itself? Still empty ! How stands the public credit — the credit of this 
great government — the credit of that never once sullied when democracy pre- 
sided — how stands it DOW? Down; and still hopelessly -inking down lower, 
b) far. than thai of an v respectable fanner in Ohio — treasury note*, if not at 
interest, depreciated, with no prospect of rising — the governments drafts daily 
protested and dishonored — its bonds hawked about in the market, and returned 

vMihout a bidder; and the government everywhere, and in all forms, treated as 
an insolvent. 

Appropriations, nevertheless, i«> on as profusely as ever — quite as much so 

a- though the treasury were full, and absolutely e\haiistless: Cor. from the amount 

ahead] passed and thai pending with the certainty of passage, it is manifest 
that thus will, at the end of the »ee ion, bear its full and just proportion to all 
the other IiiiiIis of their monstrou- sy8tem. 

Claim -omc the mOSl base, and Others the most baseless, — are now pre- 
sented against the government, and treated with the tierious respect due only to 
usl demands of the honest citizen. The holders of such claims seem to 



have discovered a mutual sympathy between the majority of this Congress and 
themselves. They repair of the Capitol with the instinct that directs the vul- 
ture to the carcass. 

The militia of Massachusetts — they, the very same who, during the late war, 
when the country was invaded, and they ordered by the President into the pub- 
lic service, positively refused obedience — refused to pass the line of their State 

refused to pull a trigger in the defence of the republic— they who, by that 

very refusal, encouraged the British, allowed them a lodgment in a Massachu- 
chusetts seaport — they who trafficked with, instead of fighting, the public ene- 
m y j they have, nevertheless, lived long enough to laugh in secret at an Amer- 
ican Senate for having, twenty-nine years after, voted to them the third of ^mil- 
lion from the national treasury, for these their services hi the late war. These 
men, who in any other country would have been treated as traitors, are, in this, 
about to be paid in money for their treason, by the very government they betrayed. 

Next come the heirs of General Hull, with then demand for the salary of 
their father, as governor of the Territory of Michigan, during the very lime, and 
for no other time, that the territory was in the possession of the British — sur- 
rendered to them, together with the gallant army from Ohio by Hull himself, — a 
crime for which he was then under arrest, and afterwards condemned by the 
law to death, as u traitor. Yet this claim, the very presentation of which was an 
outrage to every American citizen, and especially so to the citizens of Ohio, 
whose heroic people had thus been, by this very man, so basely surrendered to 
the enemy as prisoners of war, — this claim found favor in a whig committee in 
the Senate, was advocated upon the floor, and defeated only because some of 
that party, and all the democrats, were ashamed to dishonor the body by it.-. 
passage. 

But economy and justice — federal economy and justice — were, with that very 
same committee, found a sufficient bar to the repayment of the fine imposed by 
a vindictive judge on Andrew Jackson, for having expelled traitors from his 
camp during his glorious defence of New Orleans. 

If these things were not on record, no individual should state them, as the 
word of no man would alone be deemed, by the country, conclusive of facts 
so derogatory to the character of the American Congress. Yet facts they are 
— and of record, too — whosoever may be injured by them. 

Amidst the systematic policy of public ruin which this Congress has 
pursued, it has introduced, for the first time, a practice in the highest 
degree dangerous to the liberties of the people. I allude to the practice of 
the House in gagging the minority; and that of the Senate in veiling from 
the public eye the real condition of the government. In both, the dem- 
ocratic majorities are powerless. The federal majorities direct all action — hur- 
ry or retard all business, at pleasure. It is in the House that the great money 
bills chiefly originate. There, they have been studiously kept back for month 
after month. In the mean time, as an excuse for delay, debate has been en- 
couraged on matters of indifference. Then, all things being ready, those great 
measures have been suddenly brought up; and, after the most trivial discussion, 
the gag applied, and the voice silenced, under the ridiculous pretext of a want 
of time. On such occasions the democracy are hushed, not by the previous 
question, but a stern resolution which seals the lips, and forces through the 
measure without consideration, however important its provisions, and without 
the exposure of its enormities, though destructive it may be to the best interests 
of the country. Thus have millions been appropriated, and taxes by the mil- 
lion voted in the very last month of our seven months' session, without one -in- 
gle man of the minority in the House having had time enough allowed him to 
expose the impolicy or enormity of such measures. But in matters of no mo- 
ment, no gag is applied, because in these the freedom of speech endangers 
neither corruption nor despotism. 



8 

To silence the representative, is to spike the ears of the people. It is both their 
right and his that he should speak. It is theirs, because it is their business he 
js doing. It is his, because he is responsible for what he does. Their safety 
OOhmstfl in making him explain the reason of his votes — his, in being able to do 
m>. Silence and secrecy are to despotism, as are speech and publicity to free- 
dom — tin two strongest elements of its power, and only guardians of its safety. 
It i> for these reasons that I regret the closing of its doors, by the Senate, in the 
matter of nominations — a practice indefensible by argument, and excused only 
by its antiquity. But to suppress resolutions of inquiry, seeking from the Trea- 
Miry Department the facts of its actual condition — and that, too, at the time 
when money-measures of the first moment — tax, loan, and appropriation bills 
are all pending, and all relating directly to those very facts; — to suppress such 
resolutions, as did the federal majority in the Senate, is nothing less than to 
compel men to legislate in the absence of all reasons for the votes they give, 
and to withhold from the people things of the most serious import to them. 
Those who hide, will excite suspicion; and this practice of suppressing facts, 
had it been adopted by any other Congress, would have attracted the attention 
and incurred the frown of the country. But so many are the objects of just 
alarm with which this Congress has filled the public mind, that the people very 
naturally feel the more solicitude to see its session brought to a close, and the 
evils it still threatens thus arrested, and to recount those which it has already 
irretrievably inflicted upon the nation. 

There are three great measures — two of Congress and one of the executive — 
the "apportionment bill" — that for "remedial justice" — and the interposition 
m the affairs of Rhode Island; each, as I believe, infracting the constitution in. 
several particulars, and invading alike the sovereignty of the States and of the 
people. They are measures of vast magnitude, and threaten to their authors a 
terrible futurity. They are the iron frame of a despotic system, never before set 
up in this country — a system which, if allowed to stand, will prove a Bastile to 
the liberties of the nation. But such measures excite reflections that swell be- 
yond the limits of a letter; and I therefore name, only to mark them for the 
future. 

For sixteen months and nineteen days has this government been confided to 
the federal party. During every hour of that time, (save five months and nine- 
teen days.) has a federal Congress been in session — and here still it is, moping 
ihg and feeling about, amid the ruins itself has made, to find some other object 
of waste or destruction. In the mean time, the democratic minorities in the two 
houses have done all that men could do, who were in the power of others, to 
mitigate the evils the majority were entailing upon the country. But, being 
powerless as to numbers, they could effect but little by argument or remon- 
strance, addressed to men who would listen to neither reason nor experience. 

Von must, my dear sir, excuse the length of this letter, and be assured that I 
mil in great sincerity, your friend, 

W. ALLEN. 
Maj. T. J. Mom, w, Ch'n Young Men's State Central Committee. 



.[•SHED BY ORDER OF A COMMITTEE OP THE DEMOCRATIC MEMBERS 

OF CONGRESS. 



' < 



CC< 

' < 

< C < 



<±CO 

ceo • 

.occ 
< ,C 






, « < 

<*iC <- 



< 






■■■ Ccc 



C«3C «S . 

t« «r«. 



\oC- cc< < <£?<; c,c* 



■«&£.£5 






< . ... < 
I.C<tf£ < 

Cv • 
icgtc ' 
s cc 



CCG-. 

:« 

CC .G -C . 



C CC 
' CCC 

(i. 












S<c 

^ :< ■' ■' 






r S ^C 

• • CC 
£ • -c« «cV 

; t «o 

r- .c* <* 
: ■■■<: cc 

L:c<c «c 
>_• ^ <z. ^c 

Ccc 
;• rc 01 
CC (C <C 

<c ,cc at 

3C -' c <C 

• <sC • C « 

Jcc c « 

ccec - «c • 
ccc- . c 

'CciC <lc 



£ C • S 



"C(< 



<cc<cocl <j < • 



*«:c:«c: 



<^ ©c 






,5 <"■ << 
























Ess 









< .. 

<3 -_..■'■ 
CC- 
; c q* . 

<sc - ••■ 

■'■. ckc «• 

( . c. C H Q 

■■< <. (V 

"C- c v ■ 



• < % 
■Si <« , 






5 ccr- 












; .ST C ■ CC r c 






< err 



- Cc 



J- C ^ 









Vrr-, 

.-;■;•■ 









. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



011 895 582 1 



